Coachology: Building bridges at work

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After a week of posts about generational conflict, you’ll be happy to hear that Alexandra Levit is a professional bridge builder (and blogger at Water Cooler Wisdom). Leaders in the Fortune 500 call her when they can’t cope with young people anymore. She teaches people how to stop annoying each other by gaining a better understanding of generational differences.

Deloitte has a program that offers free, confidential career counseling to all employees. The counselors can talk on any topic (including how to get out of Deloitte). So I asked, “What do the older employees talk to a coach about?” And program founder Stan Smith, told me, “A lot of them use the career coach to ask what do I do about these kids?”

It’s clear this cuts both ways, too. Generation Y is not an insolent bunch. They have been treated well by older people their whole lives. They follow rules, and respect their parents. Young people are looking for ways to work well with management — ways that won’t crush their dreams.

On an individual basis this comes down to problem solving and negotiation. Working with someone is actually a series of hundreds of small negotiations. If you do them well, things go smoothly and all issues are small. If you mishandle negotiations, problems grow, and road blocks pop up.

What Alexandra can do is help you troubleshoot problem areas in your work life that are a result of generational differences. It’s a skill to learn, and you can use it over and over again. You can also use Alexandra to blow off steam. Deloitte finds that you will do better work if you have a person like this in your life as a sounding board.

This week you can get 90 minutes free with Alexandra. You’ll probably use it in 30 minute increments. Most of you can benefit from this. A place like Deloitte doesn’t offer free coaching willy-nilly. They offer it because the idea of handling everything yourself is outdated; having someone to go to for a problem drastically improves your ability to succeed at work.

If you are having generational problems at work, send an email to me with three sentences about why you want to work with Alexandra, and she’ll pick one of you to work with. Deadline is Sunday, July 15.

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Why we should be grateful for Generation Y

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What’s the point of baby boomers complaining about Generation Y at work? First of all, it’s a cliché, because people over 40 have been complaining about “young people” since forever.

Even worse, it’s a losing battle. Generation Y is huge. It’s one thing for boomers to verbally squash Generation X — that was no problem. Gen X is tiny and the baby boom was huge.

But in Generation Y, baby boomers have met their match. And in the demographic catfight of the century, Gen X aligns itself with Gen Y over baby boomers, which means that the workplace gripes boomers have about young people are going to be moot in a matter of years.

Generation Which?

So maybe the over-40 crowd should spend less time talking about trying to “bridge the generation gap” — which is really a euphemism for “get Gen Y to be more like us” — and more time celebrating the great things that Generation Y brings to the workplace. Gen Y isn’t going anywhere, and it’s not like they’re about to conform to baby boomer demands.

But before you continue reading, understand that the world doesn’t actually adhere to demographer datelines: The generation you fit into is more a function of the choices you make than the year you were born. So if you want to know where you truly fit along generational lines, take this test.

And if you want to know why baby boomers should ease up on Generation Y, consider the ways that these youngest workers are making life better for everyone:

1. They won’t do work that’s meaningless.

These kids grew up with parents scheduling every minute of their day. They were told TV is bad and reading is good, and are more educated than any generation in history. They just spent 18 years learning to be productive with their time, so they’re not going to settle for any photocopying/coffee stirring job.

But that’s good, because we all want meaning in our jobs, and we all want to understand how we’re contributing to the world at large. Why should anyone have to wait until retirement age to start demanding that?

These days, the workplace can be restructured so that we all do a little coffee stirring in exchange for each of us getting to do some meaningful work. And if work can be in some way meaningful for all of us, then the workplace in general will be a better place to spend our time.

2. They won’t play the face-time game.

We’ve known forever that it isn’t necessary to be in the office from 9 to 5 every day to get work done. But many of us have missed family events only to sit at a desk all day getting pretty much nothing done because of the stress of missing a family event. And there didn’t used to be any option — if you wanted a successful career, you made sure co-workers saw that you were putting in the hours.

Generation Y wants to be judged by the work they do, not the hours they put in. And what could be more fair than this? In fact, a good portion of the workforce has been requesting flextime for decades, but the requests have gone unheeded.

We have Gen Y to thank for forcing the switch, because if Gen Yers can’t leave the building whenever they want, they’ll walk out the door and never come back. Face the truth: Boomers weren’t willing to go that far, but they sure are benefiting from it. Now they have more opportunities for flextime, too.

3. They’re great team players.

If you’ve climbed a corporate ladder your whole career, then it’s probably inconceivable to you that Gen Y doesn’t care about your title. But it’s true — they don’t do rank. Chances are they saw their parents get laid off in the ’80s, so they know how ephemeral that special rung you stand on is and they don’t want to waste time trying to get there.

Generation Y played on soccer teams where everyone participated and everyone was a winner, and they conducted playground politics like diplomats because their parents taught them that there’s no hierarchy and bullies are to be taken down by everyone. And Gen Yers take these values to work — they expect to be a part of a team. Gen Y believes that no matter how much experience an individual has, everyone plays and everyone wins.

Maybe it’s annoying to you that you don’t get to be team captain, or worse, the bully on the playground. But you’ve read the Harvard Business Review’s decades of research on how essential workplace teams are and how older people have little idea how to be good team players, so relax: Gen Y is doing the teamwork for you. In fact, there’s no way to work with Gen Yers except on a team. They go to the prom as a team, so they’re certainly going to go to product reviews as a team.

That makes us all lucky. We don’t need any McKinsey person coming to our company for $10 million a minute telling us how to promote teamwork. We can just follow Generation Y.

4. They have no patience for jerks.

Generation Y changes jobs every two years, typically because the work isn’t a good fit, or the learning curve isn’t steep enough, or they don’t like their co-workers. And Gen Yers will disengage from a jerk before trying to get along with him or her, according to a report by Stan Smith, national director of Next Generation Initiatives at consulting firm Deloitte. They have no desire to bother with somebody they don’t like.

This is really how we all should function. After all, according to research by Stanford professor Bob Sutton, the cost of putting up with a jerk in a company is about $160,000. Moreover, Harvard researcher Tiziana Casciaro found that people hate working with high-performing jerks so much that they would rather work with someone incompetent who’s nice.

Nobody likes having to deal with jerks, but we’ve always believed it was asking too much to have a workplace full of decent people. Generation Y sets a new standard for this, and companies are having to dump jerks quickly or risk losing their ability to recruit and retain Gen Yers.

Don’t Fight the Future

So let’s get off our high horses and stop evaluating whether or not we like working with Generation Y. Its members have incredible leverage in the workplace right now, and they’re not going anywhere.

It’s time to admit that the workplace is changing and that we’re lucky to have a group as optimistic and self-confident as Generation Y leading the way.

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Twentysomething: Why I started blogging

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By Ryan Healy – People often ask why I decided to get into this whole career blogging world that I have come to love. Usually my answer is something about giving my generation a voice in the corporate discussion, or standing up for all of my peers and friends who openly discuss their bitterness towards work. These are true statements and they are some of the reasons I decided to make my voice heard. However, this is not actually why I started blogging.

One evening last fall my dad called. We often discuss random topics and potential business ideas. But this call was different because he was unusually excited. He went on a tangent about baby boomers retiring and Gen X being too small to fill their shoes. He told me about the shortage of experienced workers in the non-profit community, and the need for baby boomers like him to begin passing the torch to the younger generations.

I said, “I’m sure this is all true, but what can we do about it?”

My father said, “You and Dan (my brother and a budding entrepreneur) should write a book with Mom (a talent development expert in the banking industry) about the passing of leadership from today’s managers to generation Y.”

It was an interesting idea, and given my initial experience in the working world, I could see how bridging the gap in leadership is necessary. The book never happened. Who knows, maybe it could have worked. But what has transpired from that original idea has been pretty cool.

I studied the topic like crazy. I turned every happy hour conversation with a random peer into a learning experience, and I started writing. I probably spent five to six hours a day reading, writing and studying the topic on top of my 9-to-5 job. Then I started a blog to get some more insight and to make my voice heard. All of a sudden a famous columnist and author asked me to write a weekly column for her. I jumped at the chance.

For months now I have been writing about what I look for in a job, how I like to work, changes I would like to see. Many things I write seem to resonate with young and old alike, and of course, many people disagree with my posts, from all generations. I do not represent the views of an entire generation; it would be ridiculous to pretend I do. But that is why a blog is the perfect forum for this discussion; we can all have our say.

Sometimes the comments turn into a generational argument, and I will admit to getting a little heated and protective of my generation. Then I read comments like this one from Pirate Jo:

“The fact that today’s 20-somethings have all these options and don’t have to waste their youth on multiple, crappy jobs is a GOOD thing. I’d never want to stick them in the same situation I was in. In fact, I’m thankful for them. They’re saying the same things Gen X has been saying for ten years, but none of those damn old-school bureaucrats would listen to us because there were too few of us to matter. Now that Gen Y is joining our ranks, it’s going to make things better for ALL of us.”

After reading a comment like that, I remember that my goal was to create a dialogue, and in fact the whole idea came from a baby boomer father. I remember that I created Employee Evolution as an open forum for people to communicate with each other regardless of whether or not I agree with them.

The point of all of this is not to start an argument or to say that generation Y is better than others. We have been lucky enough to enter the job market at a time where we do indeed have the upper hand and we have the technology and means to speak freely about the topic. Some of the ideas I discuss can help us all, some will not work for everyone. If we all drop our protective guards and listen, including me, we can continue this great discussion. We can create some changes for the better; we can influence baby boomer managers to share their knowledge with generation Y and we can engage my generation enough to slow down and learn from the managers who want to help. Or we can just keep arguing.

Ryan Healy's blog is Employee Evolution.

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A question for the readers

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Some of you might know that the thousands of comments that I receive on my Yahoo column are generally abrasive. Here’s an example.

Some of the most common things people say to me in the comment section on Yahoo are:

1. Why do you write for Yahoo? You should be fired!

2. You don’t have enough experience in the workforce.

3. When you grow up, you’ll think differently about this.

It looks to me like Ryan Healy, who writes the Twentysomething column on Brazen Careerist, gets the same type of comments on this blog about his posts. Here’s an example.

Do you guys agree or disagree? What do you think about this?

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The unimportance of being right (growing up in a colorblind family)

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At some point in our lives we each have felt surrounded by people who see the world incorrectly. Sometimes it’s the accountant who works for a management team that doesn’t understand numbers. Or it’s the artist who works for a marketing team that doesn’t understand font. Sometimes we feel so certain that we are right and they are wrong that we think we need to leave.

The key to getting along with other people is to keep your eye on what really matters and let the rest go. This is the attitude that conveys poise and self-confidence in work life. And this is the way you will learn to stop caring who is right and who is wrong.

I learned this lesson early because my three brothers and my mother are colorblind. My mom and brothers see color, but they don’t see it how the rest of the world sees it. If you say, “What color is this?” and point to something, sometimes they’ll get it right and sometimes they won’t. I could say, “It’s blue, not green.” But they don’t care. Sometimes they just shrug. Or say, “Well, maybe to you, but not to us.”

There’s not much I can do when they are the majority. So I became philosophical about who is right. I realized that in most cases it doesn’t matter that I’m right and they’re wrong. So we called the family car purple, even though I knew it wasn’t.

But sometimes capitulating is not an option – for example if someone is breaking the law, or if someone is making you truly unable to do your job. But usually, in the case of ignorance, there is a way to compromise.

Once I was driving with my brother and discovered that none of my colorblind family members can see the green light. They depend on seeing if the red or yellow light is on.

I had a fit.

He said that it didn’t matter. He pointed out that my mom hasn’t seen a green light in forty years of driving.

Of course, I am right, that driving like this is a hazard. But ultimately, my family will continue to drive. And ultimately, it is an issue for the department of transportation (who I hope reads this because 10% of the population is colorblind). I would gain very little by insisting that I am right. So I concentrated on saving my life and reported the color of lights for the rest of the trip.

Many of you find yourselves surrounded by people who are, in effect, colorblind; They don’t know what they’re looking at and don’t care. Instead of insisting that these people admit they are wrong, let them think what they want while you keep your eye on the parts of your job that matter long-term.

Meanwhile, to quell your urge to be rude or mean, remember that few people are stupid in every category. So keep good relations with the chronically ignorant because they could prove useful at a later point.

I find that the most annoying part of being surrounded by the colorblind is that I’m right and there’s no one to acknowledge that I’m right. And that goes back to the fact that the best people to work are poised and self-confident. In most cases one’s own insecurity rather than brilliance makes one feels alienated by stupidity.

In search of poise and perspective in my career, I have tried to focus on myself and the smart people around me, and that has made me feel smarter and happier in my work.

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What generation are you part of, really? Take this test.

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If you want to know how old you really are, look at the media you use rather than the generation you were born into.

Generational labels are important in the discussion of the changing workforce. For example, we need to understand who is pushing for change and who is criticizing change in order to understand how to create workplace bridges. And increasingly, young people are calling for baby boomers to get out of the way.

However I get a lot of email from people at the later end of the baby boom who do not identify with baby boomers. To some extent researchers have dealt with this issue by categorizing the latter section of the baby boom separately, as Generation Jones (born between 1954 and 1965). This category will make some people feel better, but there still will be baby boomers who are indignant at being lumped with the delusional, self-centered, money-hungry baby boomers.

But hold it. Maybe you are not really part of the generation your birthday falls under.

Here’s an idea: We should determine our generation not by our age but by how we use media. This comes from Margaret Weigel, who has worked at Harvard and MIT doing research on digital media engagement:* “We should not judge people rigidly by the years they were born,” she says, “If we want to define people by categories, it should be by behaviors because this is something each of us chooses.”

Another reason to use media engagement to peg someone’s age is that the media we use reflects both the space we live in and the circle of friends we run with. For example, you probably won’t find the Wii at a senior center, and you do what your friends do or you’re out of the loop.

So here is a test I put together with the help of an interview with Weigel and an evening reading her blog. Add up your points to figure out what generation you’re really a part of:

Do you have your own web page? (1 point)

Have you made a web page for someone else? (2 points)

Do you IM your friends? (1 point)

Do you text your friends? (2 points)

Do you watch videos on YouTube? (1 point)

Do you remix video files from the Internet? (2 points)

Have you paid for and downloaded music from the Internet? (1 point)

Do you know where to download free (illegal) music from the Internet? (2 points)

Do you blog for professional reasons? (1 point)

Do you blog as a way to keep an online diary? (2 points)

Have you visited MySpace at least five times? (1 point)

Do you communicate with friends on Facebook? (2 points)

Do you use email to communicate with your parents? (1 point)

Did you text to communicate with your parents? (2 points)

Do you take photos with your phone? (1 point)

Do you share your photos from your phone with your friends? (2 points)

0-1 point – Baby Boomer

2-6 points – Generation Jones

6- 12 points – Generation X

12 or over – Generation Y

(Note: This post contains the views of Weigel and not necessarily those of Harvard and MIT.)

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Twentysomething: Problems with working at a big company

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By Ryan Healy — If there is an overarching impact my generation is already having on the corporate world, it is entrepreneurship. Roughly 80% of my friends and acquaintances plan to start their own business at some point. Both males and females, college grads and current students, everyone wants to run their own business, and many of us will.

However, it is not practical to assume that everyone will. In fact, I would bet that less than half of the aforementioned people will take the plunge into entrepreneurship. The economy needs both entrepreneurs and employees to run successfully and let’s face it, not everyone is cut out for the risky, constantly changing life of an entrepreneur.

That said, I don’t think my friends will land at large companies, either. They’ll go to smaller ones. Here are three reasons why large companies will have an increasingly difficult time trying to recruit and retain their young talent.

1. Following the crowd is boring.
To me, there is something very unsatisfying about being one of many. This does not mean that I want to rebel or move to a remote village and drop out of society. This means that I know I am an individual and I know I can achieve what I set my mind to. Because of this, following the crowd and working in a large organization with hundreds or thousands of people doing the same tasks is very disheartening.

Ben Casnocha, the best example of a young entrepreneur I can think of, sums it up best in his book, My Start Up Life. He says, “I don’t want to be normal, I want to be something else.” Simple, straight forward and to the point, this quote sums up how young, ambitious people think. These days, it’s all about going above and beyond “the crowd.” And where do you follow the crowd more than in a massive organization?

2. Bureaucracy is a waste of time.
During one of my far-too-common discussions with a friend about paychecks, raises and the corporate BS involved with them, my friend said, “I’m going to start looking for another job that pays more money. I can’t ask for a raise –I don’t even know who to ask!”

If you have a boss who reports to a boss, who reports to another boss etc. it is going to take weeks or months to get your request to the right people. And who exactly are these right people anyway? Many people I know have multiple supervisors. Which one do you ask?

I guess my friend could go to the HR department with the request, but the chances of the HR folks knowing his job responsibilities or knowing which manager to contact about the request are slim. When HR finally figures all of this out, my friend would have missed out on three or four paychecks that could have been paid at the higher rate.

So it’s not hard to understand why he is about to begin interviewing with other, smaller companies.

3. I can be a CEO and an intern at the same time.
Because of the hierarchical structures that nearly all organizations adhere to, big decisions and big-picture work happen at the top of the food chain. Smaller organizations can be much less rigid and more lenient then large organizations because of the high visibility across the organization. Even if a young person isn’t able to make the huge decision, at least they know the person who did. And they can decide if they trust the decision-maker to lead the company in the right direction.

It’s ironic that I am barely a step above an intern at my corporate job, but one could argue that I am the CEO of Employee Evolution. During the day I often perform low-level intern-type tasks, but at night I have meetings with entrepreneurs and authors, record podcasts for the Wall Street Journal and discuss my vision for the future of Employee Evolution with my web designer. It’s not hard to see why 9 to 5 at a big company probably isn’t the quickest way to the top.

Ryan Healy’s blog is Employee Evolution.

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Workplace etiquette and the art of selling it

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Have you read Bob Sutton’s book The No Asshole Rule? It’s a great book because it is the harbinger of two trends that I care a lot about.

First, this book is the first business book we can definitively say that the bloggers made a bestseller. Offline bookstores wouldn’t carry it because of the A word. And print publications wouldn’t write about the book either. My column in the Boston Globe is a good example. I wrote about the book, and my editor refused to run the title. But Bob got great press online, and eventually, brick-and-mortar stores had to carry the book because it was a bestseller.

This book also definitively marks the moment when it stopped being okay to be a jerk at work. People used to think it was okay to be the eccentric, difficult genius. When the Harvard professor Tiziana Casciaro conducted research about how people would rather work with someone incompetent than unlikable, I jumped all over it, but to be honest, the data went mostly unnoticed outside of the corner offices and the academics who visit them.

Bob Sutton ushered in the broad understanding that the total cost of working with an asshole is so high that it’s not worth it. He started naming names (Steve Jobs, anyone?). And he gave a self-exam that more than 100,000 people have taken. The book is so full of research that it has become impossible to justify being a jerk. Even to yourself.

There are some other books about workplace etiquette that have the good fortune of coming out right as Sutton’s book has paved the way for us to start talking about the nuts and bolts of being nice at work.

30 Reasons Employees Hate their Managers, by Bruce Katcher
Yes, I know it says thirty, but most of the reasons can be boiled down to one reason: Gratitude. If you manage someone, they are trying to please you. They are trying to do what you want. How can you not thank them? This is something we teach to five-year-olds.

The idea that you don’t have to verbally acknowledge people comes from the old-fashioned idea that managers can motivate people with money. That used to work well, but it doesn’t anymore. Today it is insulting to suggest that your employees are just there for the money. They want way more than that. They want to stretch themselves to do their best work and then get acknowledgement for it. And before you get all snippy about this being unreasonable, take a look at this article in the Harvard Business Review that says reaching goals and receiving praise for it makes for the most productive and happy workplace. Managers: People do not want your money as much as your acknowledgement.

Work 101: Learning the Ropes of the Workplace Without Hanging Yourself, by Elizabeth Freedman
This book is an offbeat etiquette book for people who will never need to know how to use a fingerbowl. (Side note: Yes, I did have finger bowls at my sixteenth birthday, and yes, it was insane because none of my friends knew what they were.) If you are just entering the workforce, this book will be a good introduction the unspoken rules at work, like “Your boss holds the keys to the kingdom.”

If you have been in the workforce a while, this book is a great introduction to how to use a book to propel one’s consulting business. Freedman goes to companies and teaches young people how to be more professional. And this book is a great calling card for consulting gigs, which pay way better than book publishing. Another side note: When I was younger, my boss hired a consultant to help me with these issues. She told me not to show so much cleavage. I never knew I had any. In this way she boosted my confidence and changed how I saw myself.

45 Things You Do That Drive Your Boss Crazy, And How to Avoid Them, by Anita Bruzzese
This book, too, is basically 45 things that come down to one: If you are a jerk, your boss won’t like you. The thing is that there are so many ways to be a jerk, and it’s a pleasure to see them organized into essential categories like “Stupid, sloppy and sleepy” and “Snippy, snotty and socially stunted.”

Maybe I’m partial because we’re both newspaper columnists, but I have to say that Bruzzese writes very well. But side note: What’s up with her name? Who has any idea how to pronounce it? If you want people to talk about the stuff you do, you need a name people can say. Of course, this is easy for me to say since I’m already on my fourth name now. But remember how blogs did wonders for the book with the unprintable title? Maybe blogs can also do wonders for an author with the unpronounceable last name.

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10 Ways to make people hate you at work

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Ask yourself: Do people like me?

You get promoted in this world because people like you, not because you get work done. There’s always more than one person who can get a job done. But everyone’s personality is different, so when you want to differentiate yourself at work, focus on your personality.

Showing the True You

In fact, a 2005 study published in the Harvard Business Review shows that people would rather work with someone they like who’s incompetent than someone who’s competent but not likable.

Keep in mind that “likable” is not as subjective as it seems. Most people in the office agree on who’s likable and who’s not. For example, most people like Bill Clinton — he just has a likable personality. Even the Bush family members, Clinton’s political polar opposites, say they like his personality.

So, if you want to get ahead at the office, you need to figure out how to make yourself likable. Usually, it’s not a matter of changing your personality, but rather making sure that your true personality shows through. Most people, if they’re true to themselves at work, are likable.

Ten Ways to Blow It

Then again, most people think they’re more likable than they really are, and therefore don’t try hard enough. There are many things that keep people from being likable — here’s a list of 10 of them:

• Using sarcasm as a defense mechanism

You probably don’t know if you’re using sarcasm as a defense mechanism, but if you use it a lot, it’s a safe bet that it’s in a defensive way.

• Being quiet because you’re insecure

People are inherently social animals. If you have nothing that you want to say, then you’re probably not likable because you have nothing to offer.

But if you do have things to say but don’t say them, then you’re not likable only because you’re so insecure that you believe you’ll sound stupid when you talk.

• Not revealing emotions at work

Keeping to yourself emotionally makes you seem one-dimensional, and it’s hard to convey likability with no depth. Most people who talk but don’t reveal emotions are out of touch with their emotions. You have to know them yourself to share them with other people.

Reaching Others by Reaching Out

• Being too smug — as in not asking for help or not revealing that you’ve had help along the way

To show no gratitude or no need for others is to alienate yourself. You might think that you make yourself look like Superman, able to do anything in a single bound. But superheroes don’t really exist, and real people need real help. So let them know you understand this by asking for help and expressing appreciation.

• Not seeing people for who they are

If you treat people who are powerful well and people who have no power poorly then you aren’t seeing the whole person. Power structures don’t define a person; they define a person’s clout. Treat everyone with respect or you won’t deserve it yourself.

• Being bored by others

If you’re not curious about other people, they won’t be interested in you. The most likable people make other people feel interesting by genuinely caring about them.

Me, Me, Me

• Being obsessed with your workload

If you think work matters more than people, then that’ll be true — for you. And people will expect you to be a workhorse but won’t want to get to know you. And they need to know you to like you.

• Not taking responsibility

If people don’t like you, it’s your own fault. Likable people are liked in all circumstances. If you blame people for your problems, people aren’t going to like you — even if they’re not among the people you blame.

• Hiding from objective feedback

You can get it from therapists, co-workers, teachers, and coaches, but you have to seek it out. And if you don’t, then you probably don’t have a good sense of your least likable qualities. So you don’t have the knowledge to make yourself likable.

• Not trying to change

All the knowledge in the world can’t overcome an inability to change. The ego is very strong and can rationalize anything. Don’t let yours do that. Take criticism to heart, and address it no matter how likable you think you are to begin with.

You’ll be more likable right away, because listening to others and trying to change are both inherently likable qualities.

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Book excerpt: Methods for controlling the hours you work

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My book, Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, is available now!

Here is tip #37 from the book: A Long List of Ways to Dodge Long Hours

It’s hard to leave the office at a reasonable time of day when your workplace culture centers on long hours. But the cost of not leaving work is high: a half-built life and career burnout. Of course, if you never work long hours, you will never appear committed enough to get to the top ranks. So your job is to work enough hours to look committed but not so many hours that you risk your personal life and your ability to succeed over the long haul.

People cannot work full-speed until they die. Pace yourself so you don’t burn out before you reach your potential. But don’t blame your long hours on your boss, your CEO, or your underlings. Someone who does not make a conscious, organized effort to take responsibility for the number of hours they work can be thrown off course by anyone. But the person who systematically follows the steps below will not be thrown off course, even by a workaholic boss in a workaholic industry:

Concentrate on quality of work over quantity. The person who builds a career on doing the most work commits to living on a treadmill. The work will never be done, and you will become known among your co-workers as someone who never turns down an assignment. Read: dumping ground. Quality is what matters. People don’t lose a job for not working unpaid overtime, they lose a job for not performing well at the most important times; and a resume is not a list of hours worked, it is a list of big accomplishments.

Know the goals of your job. You need to know the equivalent of a home run in your job. Get a list of goals from your boss, and understand how they fit into the big picture. Judge if your work is high quality by what people need from you and how they measure success. Be sure to get goals that are quality oriented and not hours oriented. Suggest replacing, “Devote eight hours a week to cold-calling” to “Find six qualified leads in three months.”

Find the back door. Figure out what criteria people use for promotion. It is never only how many hours you work. In many professions you need to work a lot of hours, but there is always a way to be impressive enough to cut back on hours. In the realm of superstars, achievement is based on quality over quantity. Figure out how to turn out extremely impressive work so that you can get away with fewer hours. For example, if you’re a lawyer, you could pick up one, very important client for the firm, and then cut back a little on your hours.

Refuse bad assignments. Figure out what matters, and spend your time on that. Once you have clear short-term and long-term goals, it’s easy to spot the person you don’t need to impress, the project that will never hit your resume, or the hours worked that no one will notice.

Say no. Constantly. The best way to say no is to tell people what is most important on your plate so they see that, for you, they are a low priority. Prioritizing is a way to help your company, your boss, and yourself. No one can fault your for that.

Go public. Tell people about your schedule ahead of time. For example, “I have Portuguese lessons on Thursdays at 7 p.m. The class is important to me.” When you plan a vacation, announce it early and talk about it a lot. The more people know about how much you have been preparing and anticipating your trip the less likely people will be to ask you to cancel it.

Find a silent mentor. Look for someone who is respected but does not work insane hours. This will take careful hunting because this person is not likely to be obvious about it. Watch him from afar and figure out how he operates. Few people will want to mentor you in the art of dodging work — it’s bad for one’s image. But you could enlist the person to help you in other areas and hope he decides to help you in the workload area as well.

Know your boss’s goals. Your best tool for saying no to a project is reminding your boss what her goals are. If she cannot keep track of her own goals, help her. Because if you worm your way out of work that doesn’t matter to her, so that you can do work that does matter to her, she is more likely to back you up. Also your boss will protect you from assignments from other people if you show her how the other peoples’ work affects your boss’s goals.

Take control of what you can. Even small efforts at control add up to a lot, and best of all, they usually go unnoticed by others. For example, refuse to make meetings on Monday and you are less likely to have to prepare for meetings on the weekend. Refuse meetings after 4:30 p.m. and you are less likely to miss dinner at home. Ignore your phone while you write your weekly report and you’re less likely to stay late to finish it. You don’t need to tell people: “My policy is no meetings at x time.” Just say you’re already booked and suggest another time. You can’t do this every meeting, but you can do it enough to make a difference in your life.

Know your own boundaries. “Wanting to work fewer hours” is too vague a goal because you won’t know which hours to protect. Try getting home by 7 p.m., not working weekends, or leaving for two hours in the middle of the day to lift weights. These are concrete goals for cutting back hours.

Create something important outside of work. If you don’t create a life outside of work that is joyful and engaging then you won’t feel a huge need to leave work. And if you don’t project a passion for life outside of work then no one will think twice about asking you to live at work. So get some passion in your personal life. If you can’t think of anything, start trying stuff: Snowboarding, pottery, speed dating. The only way to discover new aspects of yourself is to give them new opportunities to come out.

Be brave. Brave people can say no when someone is pushing hard, and brave people can go home when other people are working late. The bravery comes from trusting yourself to find the most important work and to do it better than anyone else. But sometimes, the bravest thing to do is leave. Some industries, for example coding video games, or being a low-level analyst at an investment bank, are so entrenched in the idea that workers have no lives that you will find yourself battling constantly to get respect for your personal life. In some cases, you are better off changing industries, or at least changing companies.

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